[formatformatformat]
After tucking Matsuto away in the cot the Scholars had made for him in the tower, Baikou returned to her study, walking slowly. It had been raining all day, and whenever it rained it felt like the cold drops and gray sky penetrated into the gaps between her bones -- the doctors might say she was crazy, but she knew what she felt.
She settled with a sigh in her chair, moving tenderly, and gazed over the stacks of charts and reports that had been piling up over the last two months... so many words, and yet they had only made enough progress for Rika to send herself to the gods-know-where in search of her precious Knight. For all Baikou knew, her research might have killed the Imperial Princess, who had departed without taking all the safety measures Baikou had wanted, and still had not sent a message--
... Her gaze stopped on the table where the cross-plane-brush had been, a moment ago, hovering over the paper, and now was dribbling its ink all around:
rrririiriiii
Even as it felt like her joints and her muscles and the ends of her limbs were burning and shrieking, she leapt up and dove for the brush, spinning its gears around and slamming it down to the page in a manner quite unlike her usual.
Bai
She felt as if the response could not come fast enough for her knotting stomach.
uccccrea
Whirling the gears again furiously, she rolled the paper along, writing on a clean space,
?
... with an emphasis that made a ! visible in the character.
Clear
And now, a deep breath of relief as she gathered her robes, finally noticed all those pains and winced, settling herself into the chair more comfortably, and took up the brush again.
Clear
Ri. Who?
Bai
Rika, of course, knew what Baikou wanted to know; they had discussed it often in their frenzied work upon the travel system.
All Well. Setsu, Hitsu, Dragon, Kou, etc. Device Fine.
Those were all the people they had been specifically tasked to find... except for one. Her brow furrowing with worry, Baikou asked,
Kiku?
An odd pause.
Kiku?
... If it weren't painful to do so, Baikou might has smacked her forehead with her hand. Oh, brilliant, eccentric, criminally forgetful Imperial Princess.
Yuu Shou Child, Baikou reminded her, Two Want? Find? Surely that would jog Rika's memory; Souken had been absolutely frantic, demanding that they retrieve her granddaughter's best friend at once.
Forget. Look.
Baikou sighed.
Well?
Yes.
... Then, a flutter of nervousness moving through her, but not one strong enough to stop her hand, she asked,
Hitsu?
Well.
Yes, yes, he was "well," she knew that -- but there were so many other things she wanted to know; his fits, were they better or worse? Had he been injured? Was it someone in particular who had faked his death--
Forgive?
It was if her heart stopped.
... Had he, then, asked of her?
Surely Rika knew that she had forgiven him a long time ago, so it could not be that she was asking Baikou to forgive... so then, did that mean he--
From her heart, and her body, and her memory and desire and intellect too, came a sudden firm resolve, so strong it felt as if her frail body would burst if she did not oblige it right away.
She grasped the brush again and, moving slowly so that her trembling would not affect the character, wrote,
Join
Who?
I
Able?
Easy
Difficult Uncomfortable
She laughed softly. What was "difficulty, discomfort" in the face of this...
Fine
Matsu?
And just as suddenly as it had grasped her, that resolve faltered. She gazed back over her shoulder, towards the room where the little boy was probably not sleeping but clinging to a soft toy and wanting his mother to come kiss him again... and...
Hoped he would forgive her.
Safe
Finally, the answer came.
Acknowledge. Use Ri
Very well; she would use Rika's signal, not the one they had recently received from the Rinkoku Army. Now what did Rika need?
Bring?
Spare, Magic, Energy, etc. Calibrate, Reference.
Baikou chuckled.
Fine, Pack Heavy. Soon.
[.formatformatformat]
